Jana Revedin

Jana Revedin, architect, PhD in architectural and urban sciences and full professor of architecture and urbanism, was born in Constance (Germany) in 1965. She studied architecture and urbanism in Buenos Aires, Princeton and Milan and taught at IUAV University in Venice as an assistant to Aldo Rossi. It was here that she presented her doctorate on the role of public space in the development of a democratic civic identity. Since receiving her authorisation to direct scientific research from the Ministry of Universities and Scientific Research in Rome in 2000 she has been appointed an associate professor of architecture and urbanism at Beuth University in Berlin and the University of Umeå in Sweden and a full professor at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden.
In 2016 she has been appointed a full professor at the École spéciale d’architecture (ESA) in Paris and commissioned to develop a two-year master’s programme “The collective factory: experimental open-work design”. In 2017 she was invited to join the École nationale supérieure d’architecture in Lyon (ENSAL) as a visiting professor and member of the LAURE (Lyon Architecture Urbanisme Recherche) Research Laboratory – which is part of the UMR 5600 “Environment, city, society” of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
In 2005 the European Commission invited her to set up the first European student competition for sustainable architecture (gau:di) whose winning projects (“a minimal house”, “urban loft” and “a market hall”) were exhibited at the Venice Biennales in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
In 2006 she established the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (placed under the patronage of UNESCO in 2010) which is awarded every year to five architects who are engaged in the search for a new architectural and urban ethics.
In 2009 she created the LOCUS Foundation which supports research into the methodology of sustainable design and the application of this methodology to projects of experimental urban renewal.

Jana Revedin is the author of reference works in the field of sustainable architecture and urban design. She was awarded the Teaching Excellence Prize of the Association of European Schools of Urban Design (AESOP) in 2013 and, together with her Swedish and Moroccan students, the Global Prize of UN Habitat’s Urban Revitalisation of Mass Housing competition in 2014. Made a Chevalier des arts et des lettres in 2014 she has also been honoured by the Academy of Architecture, Paris (Medal for the direction of the best doctoral thesis, 2016, and Prospective Medal, 2017).
Jana Revedin continues to develop her theory of participative “radicant” design and to experiment with the related interdisciplinary “open work” teaching, seeking to demonstrate that the architectural and urban project, understood as a collective process of co-programming, co-conception and co-production, is evolutionary, incremental and capable of being modelled. She teaches, works and writes in her mother tongue, German, as well as in English, French, Italian and Spanish.

Areas of research of Jana Revedin¹:

1. The right to the city: Civicity, conviviality and urban democracy through development and civic empowerment.
2. The open city and common assets: Problems of the right to the city of genders and minorities, the relationship between the empowerment of residents and their access to energy, mobility and structural and material innovation.
3. The quality of place: taking into consideration collective memory, material, sensory and human resources and the aspirations of residents to protection, comfort and habitability.

Each year Jana Revedin directs and supervises around 20 master’s papers and directs or evaluates up to five doctoral theses in architecture and urban design². This ongoing work of transmission nourishes her three areas of research developed in partnership with international research centers³.

She is invited to deliver keynote lectures on sustainable architecture and urbanism and participatory design all around the world and sits on the juries of numerous international prizes in the areas of architecture and urban development including: Europan France; Europan Sweden; the Architecture Prize of the International Union of Architects (UIA); the Sustainable Urban Landscape Award (UNESCO); the Grand Prix de l’Architecture, France; the Blue Award, Austria; the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, Paris and selection juries for commissioners of the pavilions of the Architecture Biennale in Venice.
She has been the UNESCO Delegate to the University Education and Research Commission of the UIA since 2012. This commission defines the international criteria for architectural education and the level of scientific research in architecture during biennial meetings, the UIA Biennale and the Habitat Conferences of the UN. It has also elected her President of its evaluation committee, whose role is to advise and evaluate schools of architecture and urban design and schools awarding doctorates in the science of architecture and urbanism in line with the UNESCO Charter that was drawn up in partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and adopted by the UIA.